1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to slicing food pieces and handling and processing of food piece slices after slicing.
2. Description of the Background Art
High speed automated devices for slicing food pieces, such as potatoes and the like, are known in the art. One such apparatus is the Urschel Model CC, commonly utilized to slice potatoes in the commercial production of potato chips. The Urschel Model CC includes a stationary drum with peripherally mounted knives and a rotating impeller within the drum. Food pieces, such as potatoes, are fed into the drum and forced against the peripherally mounted knives by the impeller with the slices exiting the periphery of the drum. Such drum-type slicers are efficient, and are useful for producing slices which are processed after slicing as a group to form the final product, such as washing and frying of a mass of potato slices in the production of potato chips. However, due to the manner in which slices exit the periphery of the drum upon slicing, such drum-type slicers are not particularly useful for forming slices which must be separated after slicing for further processing, such as monolayering apple slices for processing into apple chips.
For slicing elongate food pieces, such as sticks of salomi, bricks of cheese or loaves of bread, another slicing approach has been utilized by the J. E. Grote Company, Inc. of Ohio. This approach utilizes a stationary horizontal slicing table, above which projects a slicing blade at a slight angle with respect to the plane of the table. A vertically oriented pivoting guide tube carries the food pieces to be sliced above the slicing table and blade, the guide tube including a feed outlet which is reciprocated past the upwardly extending blade to slice the food pieces at the feed outlet. The slice thickness is determined by the distance the blade extends above the slicing table, the slices dropping by gravity from the slicing blade through a slot in the slicing table adjacent the slicing blade. Grote.TM. slicers have been utilized to monolayer relatively thick slices of elongate food pieces by passing a conveyor beneath the slicing table onto which the slices individually fall. However, difficulties are encountered when attempting to monolayer extremely thin slices (such as apple slices for apple chips) sliced with Grote-type slicers because such slices are lightweight, soft and highly flexible.
When forming apple slices in the production of apple chips, it is desirable to coat the surfaces of the apple slices with an aqueous solution of anti-browning agent as soon as possible after slicing. However, if the anti-browning solution is applied after monolayering the slices on a porous conveyor belt for further processing such as drying, it is only practicable to apply solution to the upper surfaces of the slices so as not to destroy the monolayer.
There thus remains a need in the art for a method for monolayering slices while coating all surfaces of the slices with solution.